Sweet Pea Cake

8" round yellow cake, buttercream frosting

Techniques Used-sweet pea flower, shell border, leaves

Focus-sweet pea border

In one of my Wilton books, there is this cake that uses the sweet pea flower for the borders as well as on the sides.  Although this is nothing like the picture in the book, I wanted to try out the sweet pea border.  I chose to do this cake because I only wanted to use one batch of frosting (3 cups).  This flower uses very little frosting, covers quite a bit of space, and makes a unique border. 

 

Since I was trying to stay within 3 cups of frosting, I had to determine the colors I wanted beforehand.  First off, having the cake frosted white meant that whatever frosting was left over could be used for the design.  I didn't measure it, but I think there was 1/2-3/4 cups of frosting left over.  (On a side note, I didn't fill as much between the layers as I normally do, so a good estimate for frosting an 8"x4" round is 2 1/2-3 cups of frosting.)  Secondly, with the flowers being blue, I could add yellow to the frosting once I was done with piping the flowers or vice versa.  I was able to make my goal and had about 1/4-3/8 cups of frosting to spare.

This cake was decorated June 2011.

Sweet Peas and Star Flowers Cake

First Tier-10" vanilla round cake, buttercream frosting

Second Tier-8" chocolate round cake, buttercream frosting

Techniques Used-sweet pea flowers, star flowers, leaves, vines,

Focus-two tier cake

I knew that with a tiered cake, each tier can't just be place on top of each other without any support, but I wanted some practice with this.  Honestly, the design on the cake wasn't at all what I envisioned, even though I think it still looks nice. 

Tier Cake Materials-4-8 supports per tier (wooden dowels, tapioca/milkshake straws, Wilton supports, etc.)

Tier Cake Directions-Make sure each tier has a plate, foil-wrapped cardboard, or something similar underneath it. 

Take your supports and set them next to the bottom tier for your measurement.  Cut to the length you need, then stick them into the bottom tier.  I only used 4, but if you are starting out with bigger tiers, you may want more support. 

Another note, if you are wanting to make a "topsy turvy" cake, I would recommend watching the Cake Boss episode called "Freaks, Fast Food, & Frightened Frankie" from Season 2.  It shows how to stack the tiers about 9 minutes into the show. 

This cake was decorated September 2009.